Boxing headguards or training headguards are widely used and usually required in boxing activities, which include individual fights, tournaments, training sessions and physical fitness programs at high school, collage, amateur, and professional levels.
These headguards vary mainly in regard to the amount and placement of padding, the weight, and the adjustability. A typical headguard is a type of helmet having padding positioned to protect various parts of the face and head, especially the forehead, temples, eyebrows, and ears; additional padding may be added to protect the cheeks, jaw, chin, and back of the head.
In a typical headguard there are the various padding components, laces, straps and buckles to adjust the size and shape of the headguard to conform as well as possible to the shape and size of the boxer's head and to secure the headguard firmly and reliably on the boxer's head, and soft but firm inner lining to provide as much comfort as possible. Obviously a single headguard could be custom-made and custom-fit onto a particular boxer's head, and all the above objectives could be optimized. However, in most gymnasiums and athletic programs a collection of large medium, and small headguards are available to be used by dozens or hundred of fighters, and even with the size adjustments of each headguard, the great variations of head sizes and shapes results in a vast number of imperfect fits. From poor fits there will be lack of comfort and/or lack of sufficient snugness to prevent rotation or tipping of the headguard relative to the head from the blows which may come from random angles.
The means for attaching and adjusting a typical headguard consists of a chin strap extending between the bottom edges of the two sides, and laces extending from the adjacent edges of two rear panels which may or may not include additional elastic. In some prior art headguards the web across the top consists merely of flexible strips of fixed length for establishing maximum size; in another prior art headguard loops extend upward from the top edges of the front, side and rear panels, and a lace is threaded through the loops. Tightening the lace forms the tops of the loops into a smaller circle which reduces the upper part of the headguard generally uniformly in both lateral and height dimensions.
In all versions, lacing up and later unlacing the rear panels is time consuming for the trainer in charge of preparing the fighters and difficult or impossible for the boxer to do properly by himself. Particularly in boxing tournaments where many fights are scheduled, one-after-another, and a subsequent fight cannot begin until a headguard is removed from one fighter and secured on another fighter, the lacing and unlacing exercise delays all persons involved; because of their haste to begin each fight, trainers and/or boxers may not devote enough time and attention to lacing to provide the most safe and comfortable fit.
As indicated earlier with these typical prior art headguards, lacing the rear and/or top is rarely likely to produce a good or perfect fit, because while the leather and foam construction is very flexible, it cannot possibly conform to all heads. Consequently, the headguard may be sufficiently tight to resist tipping in a side-to-side motion, but is subject to tipping in a front-to-rear direction or vice versa. A loose headguard is undesirable for many reasons including reduced safety, and possible reduced comfort and visibility. The new invention assures an excellent fit in regard to safety and comfort for substantially all users, and it achieves this high degree of adjustability with a fraction of the time and effort required in all known prior art headguards as will be described below in the Summary of the Invention and the Detailed Description with reference to the attached drawings.